Unpaid interns struggle, fight for better way

Some students, labor advocates say free work exploits the next generation

May 18, 2014

Marisa Giglio, an education major at Miami, is working in a Middletown elementary this spring and will have an internship at Su Casa in Carthage this summer. Neither job pays, but Giglio loves the work and wants the experience. / The Enquirer/Jeff Swinger

Written by

Dan Horn

The Cincinnati Enquirer

Morgan Carmel understands the necessity of getting real-world experience before she graduates college, even if it doesn’t come with a paycheck.

But that doesn’t make it any easier for the tourism, leisure and event planning major at Bowling Green State University to pay her bills. Making it even more stressful is that the internship she took at the Bowling Green Chamber of Commerce is part of her educational requirements and therefore counts as credit hours that must be paid.

“I’m paying to work this summer for a job I don’t get paid for,” she said. “Yeah, it’s unfair; but you have to do it.”

The 19-year-old from Fremont will be one of 750,000 young Americans working an unpaid internship this year.

Gone are the days when college kids routinely were paid for working entry-level jobs in career fields of their choice. Today, as many as half of all internships are unpaid, leaving students with a stark choice between earning valuable experience for free or being paid for doing traditional summer jobs like waiting tables.

The practice is fueling a quiet revolt. A growing number of students and labor advocates say working for free exploits the next generation of workers and creates financial hardship for poor and middle-class students.

“They discriminate on the basis of personal wealth,” said Mikey Franklin, executive director of the Washington-based Fair Pay Campaign, which wants to outlaw unpaid internships. “You can only work for free ... if you’ve got some other source to pay your rent, your gas, your grocery bills and your student loans.”

The intensifying debate has complicated a once-simple arrangement in which interns learned the ropes, fetched the occasional cup of coffee and quietly went on their way. Now, interns are suing their former bosses while universities and businesses work to rewrite policies.

Defenders of the system say unpaid internships allow employers to give thousands of students the real-life work experience they otherwise would miss.

That argument makes sense to many businesses and even some interns. But it’s a harder sell in a slowly recovering economy that makes free labor more attractive to employers and increasingly difficult on interns.

“In a downturn, the ugliest people come out of the woodwork and take advantage of people,” said Philip Gardner, director of the Collegiate Employment Research Institute at Michigan State University. “But we’ve got to be careful. If we remove all of these unpaid internships, there’s going to be a lot of kids hurting. They won’t be able to get the training they need to advance in their professions.”

Supply and demand

Unpaid internships tend to fall into two broad categories: The most common are at nonprofits, where students learn the ropes at food pantries, schools, health clinics, summer camps and homeless shelters.

The other, more controversial, unpaid internships are offered by for-profit companies. These tend to be smaller firms, though not always, and usually involve liberal arts majors seeking experience in fields such as law, communication and business.

Students in high-demand fields such as engineering and computer science typically work in co-ops or other structured programs and are far more likely to be paid.

For many, it’s a matter of supply and demand. A business may decide, for example, that paying a future scientist as an intern is a good investment because that business will be competing to hire the student after graduation.

The same demand isn’t likely to be there for a future social worker, teacher or journalist because there are a lot more of those to go around.

Students who take unpaid internships at Denison University have the opportunity to apply for stipends through the school to help cover bills, according to Brian Collingwood, assistant director of Career Exploration and Development at the liberal arts school in Licking County. He said alumni and friends of the school help finance the program as a way to support students trying to get work experience before graduation.

To earn the stipend, students must write an essay about what they hope to gain from the experience as well as craft a budget for all their expenses during the summer. Collingwood said this experience helps educate students about fiscal awareness.

About 300 to 400 students at the school participate in internships each summer, with about half of them being unpaid. By the time students graduate, more than half complete some kind of external internship, training or structured observation.

“We really encourage students to do at least one internship before they graduate,” he said.

Full-time shortage

The backlash against unpaid internships began with the recession, when a shaky labor market made it less likely that interns would be rewarded for their unpaid work with full-time jobs after graduation.

Thirty-seven percent of unpaid interns received at least one job offer after graduation in 2013, compared with with 63 percent for paid interns, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers. People with no internship at all fared about as well as the unpaid interns: 35 percent got job offers.

“People have justified it by saying, ‘I’m not getting paid, but it will lead to something,’ ” said Ross Perlin, a former unpaid intern and the author of “Intern Nation: How to Earn Nothing and Learn Little in the Brave New Economy.”

“I think we’ve seen the breakdown these last couple years because the jobs are not there at the end.”

Perlin would like to see most unpaid internships eliminated, but they are legal as long as they follow the rules.

Charities and government institutions generally have an easy go of it because their unpaid interns are basically considered volunteers in the eyes of the law. For-profit companies, though, must show the internship benefits the intern, doesn’t displace regular employees, offers training and doesn’t enrich the company.

If those rules sound subjective, that’s part of the problem. Proving an intern is behaving like a paid employee is a tough task, and so far the U.S. Department of Labor has pursued relatively few cases against employers.

Interns from California to New York have taken matters into their own hands by suing their former employers, some of which have responded by killing their internship programs altogether.

Universities are taking notice, too. Several Ivy League schools recently stopped giving credit for unpaid internships, and Miami University has stopped posting unpaid internships at for-profit companies on its website.

“We take this responsibility very seriously,” said Mike Goldman, Miami’s director of career services. “We scrutinize internships posted at Miami very carefully.”

Like Denison and most other schools, Miami tries to ease the burden on financially strapped students by offering scholarships or stipends. Marisa Giglio, an education major at Miami, earned about $3,000 in aid last year to offset her unpaid work.

She’s working part-time in a Middletown elementary school this spring and will have an internship at Su Casa in Cincinnati this summer. Neither job pays, but Giglio loves the work and wants the experience.

“It would have been a lot harder to do without the scholarship,” she said.

Collingwood said that while schools have traditionally focused on working with students to find positions, he envisions them becoming more involved with the companies and organizations offering the positions to ensure students get a meaningful experience.

Bowling Green’s Carmel said she is searching for one or maybe two paying jobs this summer to help with bills, but said she enjoys her work at the chamber.

“Getting past the money aspect, the experience is wonderful,” she said.

In fact, she has already signed up for another internship for next year at the Bowling Green Convention and Visitors Bureau. It also will be unpaid.

Rules for unpaid internships

Rules for unpaid internships

The U.S. Department of Labor sets guidelines for employers who don’t pay their interns. The standard is lower for nonprofits because many essentially consider their interns volunteers. But for-profit companies must follow these rules:

• The internship is similar to training that would be provided in an educational environment.

• The experience is beneficial to the intern.

• The intern does not displace regular employees.

• The employer gets no immediate advantage from the intern’s activities.

• The intern is not necessarily entitled to a job at the end of the internship.

• Both the employer and the intern understand the internship is unpaid.

Source: U.S. Department of Labor

History of the intern

History of the intern

The internship began in America’s hospitals in the mid-1800s, when doctors in training got hands-on experience under the watchful eye of veteran physicians. To this day, many older Americans still refer to residents, or student doctors, as “interns.”

Other industries began adopting similar programs in the early 1900s, seeking on-the-job training for teachers, bankers and others. Early internship programs were modeled on apprenticeship programs common in blue-collar professions.

More companies jumped on the internship bandwagon in the 1970s and 1980s, often viewing the system as a pipeline to young talent they eventually would hire full-time. Today, about half of all college graduates held at least one internship.

Sources: National Association of Colleges and Employers, Time magazine and Ross Perlin, author of “Intern Nation”

Benjamin Lanka, enterprise editor for CentralOhio.com, contributed to this article.